Gonzalo F-Torija Daza

MHD and scientific computation are the areas in which I acquired and expanded most of my new abilities and techniques within the vast topic of plasma physics. In addition, not only the personal efforts and the capacity for self-sufficiency in day-to-day work pushed in expanding my insight, also the guidance of my advisors and my colleagues’ conversations had a significant impact.

During my postdoctoral appointment in Austin, my primary research is focused on collaborating with the FAR3D team, led by Jacobo Varela. We are aiming to include diamagnetic effects in the code, developing a linear and nonlinear version. The physical problem under study is the impact of Alfvenic Activity during the saturation phase of a NBI operational regime in supressing the Ion Temperature Gradients (ITGs) instabilities. For this end, the model had to be modified, along with most of their equations. Right now, my responsibilities include implementing, debugging and benchmarking. Understanding these effects, and being capable of reproducing experimental observations, will boost the use of FARD3 by giving timely interpretations during the campaigns and obtaining precise profiles for the more accurate gyrokinetic simulations.

Equilibrium configurations are my other area of interest. Recently, I opened a new secondary research project, studying the effects of flows in Negative Triangularity axisymmetric equilibrium. During my PhD, I developed a free-boundary code, FLIPEC (Free fLow Iterative Plasma Equilibrium Code) and recently, I have been implementing a module capable to read EFIT data. These equilibria will act as initial guesses for the code, enabling us to investigate the issues found in DIII-D 2023 NT campaign related to plasma shaping. In NBI regimes, flows can influence relevant geometry locations such as plasma boundary and the X-point position. The lack of literature in this matter highlights the value of this approach.

These experiences depict me as a motivated early career researcher with acquired skills in coding from the scratch and the capability of dealing with the subtleties of MHD behaviour. Handling or developing any code comes naturally to me and I feel comfortable addressing any new mathematical structures and geometries. However, is through computation how I get motivated to delve into any new kind of physical phenomenon and its intricacies, and most importantly, this is the primary conduct for me to help my colleagues, the research institution and the broader Nuclear Fusion community.